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This is a weird case of Musk being right, in a way. Before the hyperloop paper he was asked about "maglev in an evacuated tube" and he said the economics of th

This is a weird case of Musk being right, in a way. Before the hyperloop paper he was asked about "maglev in an evacuated tube" and he said the economics of that didn't make sense. The hyperloop paper proposed an air-bearing for levitation rather than magnetics, and presumably that doesn't work either; I'm not a mech-e, but I'd imagine the tolerances for an air-bearing are too tight for a tube that is attached to (moving) earth.

tunesmith 3y ago
I'm out of the (hyper)loop... what was he saying did make economic sense then?
- aidenn0 3y ago
  It was supposed to be an air-bearing; there would be some sort of fan that would take air from the front of the car, and move it to the back of the car, diverting some fraction to the bottom of the car for it to slide over (think like an air-hockey table).
  - darksaints 3y ago
    I work quite a bit with air bearings. There is an inverse relationship with pressure requirements and tolerances. If you want low pressures, you need high tolerances...if you want low tolerances, you need high pressures. There was some fundamental math that could have refuted this idea from the very beginning, but Musk spoke before he calculated.
    - aidenn0 3y ago
      Thanks for that, I suspected something like that was true, but have zero experience with air-bearings other than the aforementioned air-hockey.
darksaints 3y ago
How is this an example of him being right? He neither proved that his idea worked, nor did he prove that maglev didn't work. Obviously he has gotten some things right, which is a good thing. But Musk has an extraordinary track record of being wrong about a lot of things. That, by itself, is not a problem - you lose, you learn, you fix, you win. The problem is that Musk aggressively attacks public policy with his aggressive wrongness: - Don't invest in surface public transit, we're so close to full self-driving cars and then traffic will be solved! - Don't invest in subway systems, we're gonna build better tunnels for self driving cars! - Don't invest in high speed rail, we could build a hyperloop for much lower cost and it would be 3x faster! - Don't dive in there to save those kids dying in the flooded tunnel, that's dangerous! Trust me, I'm gonna build a submarine that can get them out! As far as I'm concerned, Musk can be wrong all he wants, but stop fucking with the world's decisions if you're gonna insist on being wrong all the time.
- aidenn0 3y ago
  I think this is evidence of him being (narrowly) right. I'm guessing his idea doesn't work either because I think zero people involved in projects named "Hyperloop" have come forward with a prototype. I mentioned it in the first place because him being right about something like this is peculiar, not because it's typical.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  I have never heard him tell people not to do any of those things, tbh.
  - darksaints 3y ago
    https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1571628269555826688?lang=en https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1571628269555826688?lan...

tunesmith 3y ago

I'm out of the (hyper)loop... what was he saying did make economic sense then?

aidenn0 3y ago
It was supposed to be an air-bearing; there would be some sort of fan that would take air from the front of the car, and move it to the back of the car, diverting some fraction to the bottom of the car for it to slide over (think like an air-hockey table).
- darksaints 3y ago
  I work quite a bit with air bearings. There is an inverse relationship with pressure requirements and tolerances. If you want low pressures, you need high tolerances...if you want low tolerances, you need high pressures. There was some fundamental math that could have refuted this idea from the very beginning, but Musk spoke before he calculated.
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    Thanks for that, I suspected something like that was true, but have zero experience with air-bearings other than the aforementioned air-hockey.

darksaints 3y ago

How is this an example of him being right? He neither proved that his idea worked, nor did he prove that maglev didn't work. Obviously he has gotten some things right, which is a good thing. But Musk has an extraordinary track record of being wrong about a lot of things. That, by itself, is not a problem - you lose, you learn, you fix, you win. The problem is that Musk aggressively attacks public policy with his aggressive wrongness: - Don't invest in surface public transit, we're so close to full self-driving cars and then traffic will be solved! - Don't invest in subway systems, we're gonna build better tunnels for self driving cars! - Don't invest in high speed rail, we could build a hyperloop for much lower cost and it would be 3x faster! - Don't dive in there to save those kids dying in the flooded tunnel, that's dangerous! Trust me, I'm gonna build a submarine that can get them out! As far as I'm concerned, Musk can be wrong all he wants, but stop fucking with the world's decisions if you're gonna insist on being wrong all the time.

aidenn0 3y ago
I think this is evidence of him being (narrowly) right. I'm guessing his idea doesn't work either because I think zero people involved in projects named "Hyperloop" have come forward with a prototype. I mentioned it in the first place because him being right about something like this is peculiar, not because it's typical.
_ea1k 3y ago
I have never heard him tell people not to do any of those things, tbh.
- darksaints 3y ago
  https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1571628269555826688?lang=en https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1571628269555826688?lan...